Scientists observed a wild male orangutan repeatedly rubbing chewed leaves of a medicinal plant on a facial wound in a forest reserve in Indonesia.
This is the first known sighting of a wild animal using a plant to treat a wound, and it confirms that humans are not the only ones to use plants for medicinal purposes.
The male orangutan, Rakus, lives in Gunung Leuser National Park on the island of Sumatra and is believed to be around 35 years old. For years, researchers have followed orangutans like him as they travel through the forest, making their way through the canopy in search of fruit to eat.
Scientists at the park’s Suaq Balimbing Research Area first noticed an injury on his face on June 25, 2022, when they saw his self-medicating behavior begin.
“Once I heard about it, I was extremely excited,” said Isabelle Laumer, a primatologist at the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior in Germany, in part because records of animals self-medicating are rare — even more so when it comes to treating injuries. She and her colleagues detailed the discovery in a study published Thursday in the journal Scientific Reports.
The plant used by Rakus, known as akar kuning or yellow root, is also used by people throughout Southeast Asia to treat malaria. diabetes and other conditions. Research shows that this is the case anti-inflammatory And antibacterial properties.
Orangutans rarely eat the plant. But in this case, Rakus ingested a small amount and also smeared the wound several times. Five days after the wound was noticed, it had closed and, less than a month later, “healed without any signs of infection,” Dr. Laumer said.
Michael Huffman, a visiting professor at the Institute of Tropical Medicine at Nagasaki University in Japan, who was not involved in the study, said: “This is, to my knowledge, the first published study demonstrating that An animal uses a plant with known biomedical properties for the treatment of a wound.
Primates have been observed appearing to heal wounds in the past, but not with plants. In Gabon, central Africa, a group of more than two dozen chimpanzees were observed chewing and applying flying insects to their wounds, said Simone Pika, an animal cognition expert at the University of Osnabrück in Germany, which documented this observation.
Orangutans have been observed using medicinal plants in different ways: 2017 scientists reported that six Bornean orangutans rubbed chewed leaves of a shrub with anti-inflammatory and analgesic properties on their legs and arms, probably to soothe sore muscles.
“The general patterns of application are similar, which is good for our understanding of the species’ propensity for this type of drug-like behavior,” Dr. Huffman said.
Examples of self-medication in primates remain rare and their behavior is not completely understood. Chimpanzees, bonobos, gorillas and white-handed gibbons are all known to occasionally eat whole, rough leaves, probably to help them…
